


chamomile and carnivorous plants

by Ellessey



Series: tea leaves and spice (girls) [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 18:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7769137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellessey/pseuds/Ellessey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'There was no great defining moment, no point in time Kenma can look to and say, <i>That's what did it. That's when I fell for Kuroo.</i> He just <i>did</i> somehow.</p><p>And it's the worst. For so many reasons.'</p><p>--</p><p>Kenma needs to admit a few things to himself, and to Kuroo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chamomile and carnivorous plants

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks as always to my dearest Editor [Esselle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Esselle). 
> 
> And a huge thank you to the multitalented [notallballs](http://archiveofourown.org/users/notallbees/pseuds/notallballs) who illustrated a scene! from this story! You'll see it within the fic itself, but please also go check it out in its full sized glory [here](https://notallballs.tumblr.com/image/148943233277).

Kenma is awake, looking up at the ceiling, listening to Kuroo breathe.

It’s always been a comforting sound, steady and reassuring, and it still is, but...the fact that Kenma has just been curled up in bed for the past ten minutes, listening to Kuroo’s breathing in the soft light of early morning, _that_ is not reassuring at all.

Kenma isn't sure when exactly it happened. There was really no reason for him to go from seeing Kuroo as his obnoxious, lanky best friend, to his obnoxious, lanky best friend whose familiar, crooked grin makes Kenma's heart beat too quickly even in a body that is seated and still.

There was no great defining moment, no point in time he can look to and say,  _T_ _hat's what did it._ _That's when I fell for him_. He just _did_ somehow.

And it's the worst. For so many reasons.

Not the least of which is that they are so poorly matched. Kuroo loves being around people, _loves_ it. He feeds off of it, gets amped up and hyper and fulfilled, and Kenma just wants everyone to distance themselves so they stop bumping his elbows while he's trying to play a game.

Also Kuroo talks. All the time. _All_ the time. There is no need, ever, for that many words to come out of someone's mouth.

And it's not like Kenma dislikes him because of these things, obviously. He just can't help thinking that they're already pushing their luck being friends when they're so different. He can't imagine their level of success would be very high if they tried to carry it farther.

Not that it matters.

Because Kuroo has no idea that anything has changed inside Kenma, and Kenma knows there's nothing inside Kuroo that is making him see things differently, because Kuroo would tell him. He tells him everything. _Everything._ Just last week he had to listen to Kuroo telling him about jerking off to the thought of a guy at the gym, and does Kenma think that's weird? Should Kuroo avert his eyes when he passes him from now on because he's essentially defiled him in his head? ( _You're defiling me right now_ , Kenma had said. _Conversation over.)_

He wouldn’t tell a story like that to someone he had any thoughts of being with. Really, he shouldn't tell stories like that to anyone, but it is what it is. Kuroo is Kenma's best friend, and this is what they do. Kenma grudgingly listens to Kuroo's whining and his inappropriate stories, and Kuroo occasionally shuts his mouth and reads quietly beside Kenma when he's really not feeling like doing anything but losing himself in a video game.

They're oddly matched, certainly, but it's been working for them for most of their lives all the same.

At least until this _thing_ happened in Kenma. This unasked for shifting of emotion, this coming forth of feelings that have no place in Kenma or in his friendship with Kuroo. He's been pushing them aside for months now, probably for most of this whole past year actually, since Kenma moved out of his parents home and into Kuroo's apartment when he started university.

Huh. Maybe that's what it was. Proximity. Too much Kuroo, too close to him. He doesn't know what he was thinking.

(He does. He was thinking that he'd felt it in his chest like a hard little knot when Kuroo went off to college, and Kenma still had a year of high school left. He was thinking that the nagging tightness finally started to ease in him when Kuroo offered him the other side of his bedroom, once it was time for Kenma to decide where to live after he began college too.)

So. Maybe _that's_ what it was then. Not enough Kuroo, too far away from him.

In any case, he is here now. In what is now their apartment, and their room, and their one-sided discussions about jerking off to images of a hard-bodied personal trainer, and Kenma...Kenma wishes life were more like a video game, and he could just pause it and set it aside until things started to come together in his head. Until he felt ready to try again, certain of which direction he should be taking.

There’s nowhere else to _go_ with Kuroo except for where they are, but where they are isn't what it was before, so—

“Kenma?”

Kenma looks up. Kuroo is awake now, looking at Kenma from across the approximately three feet that separate their beds. His hair is smashed over half his forehead and he's bleary eyed, features still soft and sweet in that way that makes Kenma want to crawl into his bed and curl up with him.

He used to do that, let Kuroo wrap his long limbs around him while he was busy on his phone, like a heated, wraparound chair. He never really thought anything of it until the _change_ happened and it started to become too much of a distraction. ( _I can't_ think _with you doing that,_ he'd said, the first time all that body heat and soft breath next to his ear had become too much, and he'd been afraid Kuroo would hear how unreasonably fast and loud his heart was beating. Kuroo had just dropped down next to him, good natured as always, and reached over to ruffle Kenma's hair before settling down to read right beside him, instead of on top of him.)

Kenma still lets him, sometimes, but it's not the same anymore, and more often than not Kenma gets twitchy and restless, shifting around until Kuroo pulls back on his own. And that's getting to Kenma, too, because he doesn't want things to change. He wants Kuroo to feel like it's okay to drape his stupidly long limbs all over Kenma, and he wants to be okay with it, too. Wants to breathe normally and focus on his games like he was always able to before, but now—

“ _Kenma,”_ Kuroo says again. “Are you trying to hypnotize me or something?”

“What?”

“You're giving me the stare down. Like, full-on, hyper-intense gold death ray eyes.”

“You're ridiculous,” Kenma says, and Kuroo grins, tilted up a little on the right, and still soft.

“What were you thinking about?” he asks, and then before Kenma can think up an answer he pats the bed next himself and says, “Come tell Kuroo.”

“Not happening,” Kenma says, rolling onto his back. “Your bed is gross.”

“What? It is not, my bed is wonderful. I bet it smells like me.”

Kenma snorts. “Point made.”

“Kozume Kenma, you are hurting my feelings,” Kuroo says, getting out of bed and climbing over Kenma to drop down on his other side. “I’ll have you know I washed my sheets just last month.”

“So gross,” Kenma says, keeping his eyes closed so he only has to smell Kuroo, that light, almost spicy scent, and doesn’t have to see how soft his skin is close up, his pale, elegant neck and his long, dark eyelashes that Kenma has found himself, just lately, wanting to touch. He fell asleep last night thinking about carefully tracing his fingertip along them, wondering how they’d feel brushing against his cheek.

“Speaking of gross,” Kuroo says. “That guy? From the gym?”

“The one who looks like a god?” Kenma asks, before he can stop himself from getting involved in what is sure to be a conversation he wants nothing to do with. “He’s gross now?”

“No, Kenma, focus please. _Me, I_ am gross. _He_ is hot as fuck as always, and he was working with someone _right next_ to me last night. Like I had to spend a full half hour just drowning in my own shame.”

“Good,” Kenma says. “Stop objectifying the personal trainers.”

“You sound bitter, Ken-chan.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you want someone to objectify you?”

“Please get out of my bed. You have morning breath and you’re giving me a headache.”

Kuroo sighs, loud and drawn out and entirely fake. “Tell me you love me even though I’m desperate and gross.”

Kenma rolls his head to the side and gives Kuroo the most disinterested look he possibly can. “You’re not so gross that I can’t stand you.”

Kuroo smiles and Kenma sighs for real, small and weary and thankfully something Kuroo will take as an intentional response to his grossness, instead of what it really is.

“Thanks,” Kuroo says, and then he kisses Kenma’s forehead and climbs back over him to amble into the bathroom.

Kenma wonders if it’s even possible now for him to feel like he used to, for him to see Kuroo the way he’s supposed to.

Sometimes, in moments like that, with Kuroo so stupid and sweet and _him,_ with him pressing his lips to Kenma’s skin, he wonders if he even really, honestly, wants it to. Or if maybe what he really wants is for Kuroo to wake up one day and look across the space between them, and decide to stay right there instead of getting up, just waiting for the sun to rise and listening to Kenma breathing.

*

 **Kenma  
** _I have a question. Are you busy?_

 **Shouyou  
** _kenma!! im just studying i don’t undetstand it at all what’s up?_

 **Kenma  
** _Do you have an exam tomorrow? I don’t want to distract you_

 **Shouyou  
** _Its just a make-up...if i answer the opposite of everything i said last time tht should help right?_

 **Kenma  
** _…shouyou, can i help you study?_

 **Shouyou  
** _!!! that woulld be awesome! is that what u wanted to ask me?_

 **Kenma  
** _I’m calling you now_

Kenma spends the next hour and a half sitting on his floor and talking to Hinata Shouyou, attempting to walk him through his notes, and getting closer and closer to not saying a word about the reason he messaged his friend in the first place.

“I’d better call Tobio after we hang up,” Shouyou says. “He’s definitely been doing this all wrong, too.”

Kenma bites the inside of his cheek and has to make a quick decision. Take this opportunity or let it pass by.

“Hey, Shouyou,” he says. “You and Kageyama, when that started…”

“Yeah?”

“How did you...did you know that he liked you, before you said something?”

“I was pretty sure,” Shouyou says. “I mean he’s totally emotionally constipated, but that actually makes him pretty easy to read.”

“For you,” Kenma says.

“I guess, yeah. He’d get all weird and red-faced and tight-lipped whenever we were close, so it wasn’t too hard to put together. Why do you wanna know?”

Kenma wishes his phone was in his lap instead of against his ear, so he had something to be doing with his hands. He twists one in the hem of his shirt instead.

“If he hadn’t been so obvious, if you didn’t know if he saw you like that at all, do you think you would have told him how you felt?”

Shouyou is quiet for a moment, which is a little strange, but nice, because it means he’s really focusing now. Also not so nice because it means he’s going to ask the exact questions Kenma doesn’t want to answer.

“Who do you like, Kenma?”

“No one.”

“Is it Kuroo-san?”

“I don’t know,” Kenma says. He probably would have said no if Shouyou were right in front of him now instead of just a voice in his ear.

“Huh,” Shouyou says, and then they’re both quiet for a good minute and Kenma may be wearing a hole in his shirt at this point. “I don’t know...” Shouyou says eventually. “I think...I think I probably would have had to tell him anyway, with the way I was feeling. I felt like I was gonna explode, you know?”

“Yeah,” Kenma says. It’s something like that, the way he feels.

But he doesn’t think this is the same as what Shouyou experienced with his best friend-turned-boyfriend, because Kuroo doesn’t get weird around Kenma. He doesn’t blush or get flustered or do any of the things he does around all the crushes Kenma has watched come and go. Kuroo is not emotionally constipated at all, at least where Kenma is concerned. He is a constant outpouring of emotion, and none of it has ever given Kenma the slightest hint that Kuroo loves him as anything more than his very best friend, just like he always has.

“I think I probably can’t,” he says.

Shouyou makes a comforting, sympathetic little sound of acknowledgement, and Kenma leans his head back against his bed and sighs, which he is getting really tired of doing.

He’s still sitting there half an hour later, playing a game on his phone, when he hears Kuroo come in the front door from his evening class. He bangs around in the kitchen, popping open a can of something. Whatever it was clatters down on the counter a few minutes later, and Kuroo comes into their bedroom where he, of course, sits down on Kenma’s bed instead of his own.

“Hello, small one,” he says. Kenma ignores him and Kuroo shuffles around a bit and then begins tapping away at his own phone. The silence lasts for about ten minutes, which is truly impressive because usually Kuroo can’t shut up the first fifteen minutes, at least, after returning home. Then he exhales loudly and shifts closer to Kenma, who gives him a withering look over his shoulder.

“What, Kuroo,” he says with no inflection, so Kuroo doesn’t get the erroneous impression that his little plea for attention has incited actual curiosity in Kenma. He continues working through his game while Kuroo makes a few more pathetic sounds behind him, like he has to work up to whatever it is he’s about to unleash.

“Do you think I'm a bad kisser?” he asks.

Kenma's finger jumps and he loses his weapon, right as he’s approaching the enemy he’s been searching for since he started playing. He tips his head lower over his phone, so his hair hangs in his face and blocks his pink cheeks.

“Having never kissed you, I can't speak to how much you may suck,” he says.

“Yeah I know, but...do you think I might be?”

Kenma squeezes his eyes shut. He can hear his character dying violently. He should have paused as soon as Kuroo came in.

“Why are you worrying about this?” he asks.

Kuroo flops backwards on the bed so his head is now hanging off the edge of it, his face upside down and directly next to Kenma's. Basically resting on his shoulder.

“I've just been single for so _long._ Am I undateable, do you think? Do people just look at me and _know_ I'm probably a bad kisser?”

“Oh my God,” Kenma says.

“Oh my God, yes?” Kuroo says, turning to face him. His fringe of dark hair brushing right against Kenma's cheek.

“I have no idea if you're a bad kisser,” Kenma says, keeping his eyes on the pixelated carnage unfolding in his abandoned game. "But that's not why you're single. You're single because you're a giant walking heart with oversized limbs. You don't just want to date someone, you want to love them."

He wishes he didn’t know this, but he does. People think Kuroo is so cool and smooth. They probably think he’s a lot more experienced than he actually is, too, but Kenma knows. He knows he gets off by himself thinking about a random guy at the gym, because he’s too much of a romantic to just hit on the guy and get off with him for real, quick and meaningless.

“Huh,” Kuroo says, his breath puffing out warm and soft on Kenma's face. Kenma is going to die. Just like the small Kenma-esque avatar on his phone. “That was really pretty sweet. You barely even managed to pass it off as an insult.”

“I can try again,” Kenma says. “You should definitely feel mildly insulted right now at the very least.”

“You love me,” Kuroo says, and Kenma drops his phone.

“I'm hungry,” he says, slipping out from under Kuroo and starting to get to his feet. Kuroo wraps an arm around his waist before he can walk away though, tugging him back so he’s suddenly seated on the bed and Kuroo is sitting up next to him.

“Just wait. I’ll feed you, but just...I’m serious. Do you really think I’m hopeless?”

“That’s not what I said,” Kenma says carefully. “Why are you even so worked up about this? You’re twenty years old, Kuroo. It’s not like you’re about to be put out to pasture.”

“I know,” Kuroo says. “But I like...having someone.”

“You have plenty of someone’s. You have friends.”

Kuroo laughs softly. “That’s not the same, Kenma. Yeah, I love my friends, but...I want someone to kiss and hold and mess around with.”

Kenma’s face is so, so hot. He’s so grateful for his long hair.

“Don’t you ever want...well, I guess I don’t know. _Do_ you ever want that? With someone?”

There is no way to answer this without making things very uncomfortable. If Kuroo had asked him a year ago, maybe, it would have been easy. No. It’s not something he ever felt like he was missing. It’s understandable that Kuroo is curious, because Kenma has never shown any interest in anyone. Kuroo doesn’t even know that Kenma likes guys. _Kenma_ doesn’t even know that he likes guys, actually, he just knows that he likes Kuroo.

But Kuroo is sitting here talking about _someone,_ and the only one Kenma can see himself wanting anything with is not a faceless someone, it’s Kuroo. So what can he tell him now?

“I don’t know, Kuroo,” he say quietly. “I don’t know what I want. But I don’t think you’re hopeless. And you’re probably not a bad kisser.”

Kuroo smiles and then crooks a long, slender finger under Kenma’s chin to tilt his face up and turn it towards him. “We could…”

Kenma feels his eyes go wide. Kuroo is so close, touching his face, looking hesitant and dark-eyed and beautiful.

“What?” he asks. His voice barely makes it out, it’s just a whisper that Kuroo can probably feel on his face.

Kuroo shakes his head suddenly, blinking, and then looking at Kenma again with that smokey look gone from his eyes. “We could go out,” he says, his hand dropping from Kenma’s chin. “If you don’t want my cooking. I’ll take you for ramen.”

“Okay,” Kenma says quickly, so Kuroo will look away from him and get ready to go.

He’d rather stay home, burrowed under his covers with headphones on, and forget about this entire conversation and Kuroo’s fingers on his face.

But Kuroo would be right there, three feet away.

Proximity.

Fucking proximity.

*

 **Shouyou  
** _how’s it going Kenma? Have u...talked to him?_

 **Kenma  
** _nope_

 **Shouyou  
** _are u going to?_

 **Kenma  
** _nope_

 **Shouyou  
** _wanna get online and play?_

 **Kenma  
** _Yes, but i’m in class right now. Shouldn’t you be also?_

 **Shouyou  
** _i overlsept so im just waiting for my next one_

 **Kenma  
** _How did the exam go last week?_

 **Shouyou  
** _Great!! i passed, and so did Tobio!_

 **Kenma  
** _That’s great shouyou!_

 **Shouyou  
** _couldn’t have done it without u!_

 **Shouyou  
** _I was thinking...can i try to help u too?_

 **Kenma  
** _What do you mean?_

 **Shouyou  
** _I think u should tell kuroo. If im being honest. I think not telluing him isnt good for u, and what if he likes u too? thikn of how awesome that would be!_

 **Kenma  
** _I appreciate that shou-chan...but think of how not awesome it would be if he doesn’t_

 **Shouyou  
** _I guess. But i know what it feels like to ahve all that inside of u and try to keep it there. u cant be feeling that awesome right now annyway_

 **Kenma  
** _Not so awesome, no._

 **Kenma  
** _i’ll think about it, okay?_

 **Shouyou  
** _Ok!_

 **Shouyou  
** (◕‿◕)

 **Kenma  
** (=^ ◡ ^=)

 *

Kenma can’t really do anything other than think about it. It’s not going away, this thing that has woken up in him, and he wonders if maybe Shouyou is right.

Except it’s not just that—the worry that Kuroo won’t feel the same, probably _doesn’t_ feel the same. There’s also the fact that it might not work, even if by some chance it is what they both want. They might take the thing that matters most to Kenma, and destroy it by trying to change it.

Or maybe Kenma is already doing that. The more he tries to ignore his unwanted feelings, the harder it is to act like everything is normal. And of course, Kuroo notices.

“Kenma...are you okay?” Kuroo asks. Again.

“I’m fine,” Kenma says into his mug of tea. He has it cupped between his hands, with his knees bent up to his chin so he is essentially wrapped around the steaming drink. Kuroo has just bathed and is now sitting next to him, his feet also up on the couch. Watching him.

“Just for the sake of argument though,” Kuroo says, poking his bare toes into Kenma’s thigh. “If you, by some chance, _weren’t_ actually fine...what would you say you were?”

Kenma exhales slowly and then breathes in. Honey and chamomile and something citrusy. It’s helping to cover the smell of clean Kuroo. Clean Kuroo is the worst Kuroo. His hair is still wet and it’s all tousled and curling slightly, and every bit of him smells so good. Clean t-shirt straight from the laundry basket, clean skin, still a little pink from where he scrubbed too rough like he always does. Kenma can hardly bear clean Kuroo.

“I’m meditating,” Kenma says.

“You are not.”

“I am. And it will take me twice as long if you keep interrupting me. And then we’ll never get to watch the plant documentary I recorded for you last night.”

“Bullshit,” Kuroo says. And then, “...plant documentary?”

“Carnivorous plants,” Kenma says, still looking at his tea and trying to pretend Kuroo is fifty times less attractive than he actually is. Fifty times less sweet and clever and dorky and...and...seriously, what even is that smell? How does he smell _that_ good?

“Kenma!” Kenma can _hear_ Kuroo smiling. He can hear the delighted expression on his face, the way his eyes are probably all bright and beautifully happy. “Why are you so good to me?”

Kenma dips his nose right into his mug so the tip of it is almost touching the tea. There is no freshly-bathed boy with sparkling eyes beside him. There is just chamomile. And carnivorous plants.

He doesn’t answer Kuroo and Kuroo doesn’t ask him to, he just wraps an arm around Kenma’s shoulders and lets him pretend to be meditating on something other than the feel of soft, clean skin against the back of his neck.

*

 **Kenma  
** _Shouyou...how would you feel about me coming to visit?_

 **Shouyou  
** _for real?_

 **Shouyou  
** _are u actully asking me that?_

 **Kenma  
** _i can’t tell how you’re saying that. are you strongly against the idea?_

 **Shouyou  
** _lolol...kenma! no!_

 **Shouyou  
** _here..this is my reaction_

 **Shouyou  
** _☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆_

 **Kenma  
** _That expression is questionable...you could be really angry_

 **Shouyou  
** _Kenma_

 **Kenma  
** _Shouyou?_

 **Shouyou  
** _please come visit me_

 **Shouyou  
** _are u ok?_

 **Kenma  
** _I’m alright. I just…_

 **Shouyou  
** _need a littlle time away?_

 **Kenma  
** _Yes, and I’d like to see you_

 **Shouyou  
** _I’d love to see u..can u come this weeknd??_

 **Kenma  
** _Yes, that would be perfect. Thank you Shouyou_

 **Shouyou  
** _of course!! (≧◡≦) ♡_

 **Kenma  
** _(´｡• ω •｡`) ♡_

*

Kuroo walks to the train station with Kenma on Friday night, running over the items in his bag and acting like Kenma will be gone far longer than he actually will.

“Do you have your phone charger?” he asks when they’ve arrived at the station and Kenma’s train is due any minute.

“Of course I do,” Kenma says.

“And you’ll text me when you get there?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Kenma, do not mock me. I’m going to miss you.”

“It’s two days,” Kenma says. But he’s going to miss Kuroo, too.

“And _nights._ What if you get lonely? Are you going to snuggle with the tiny redhead? He won’t be able to keep you as warm as I can.”

Kenma looks around at the people near them, a few of which are casting curious glances their way. He ducks his head and resolutely ignores Kuroo until he hears the train approaching.

He lets Kuroo hug him before he gets on, long arms wrapped around him tight and chin tucked over his head. He keeps his arms flat against his own sides because he doesn’t trust himself to let go if he holds onto Kuroo now.

The two hours on the train pass by quickly, Kenma spends them playing on his phone and occasionally answering Kuroo’s texts asking if he’s still alive and if anyone is bothering him.

 **Kenma  
** _stop talking to me_

 **Kuroo  
** _you know, kitten..._

 **Kenma  
** _don’t call me that_

 **Kuroo  
** _i’m starting to feel like you are going to visit the little crow just so you can get away from me_

 **Kenma  
** _please do some laundry while im gone. i don’t want to come back to the smell of filth and gym socks_

 **Kuroo  
** _but you want to come back?_

 **Kenma  
** _I live there kuroo. the chances of me not coming back are pretty slim_

 **Kuroo  
** _But i live there too_

 **Kenma  
** _what’s your point?_

 **Kuroo  
** _nothing...i’ll stop bothering you. have a fun time with sunshine child and his brooding counterpart :3_

Kenma puts his phone in his bag and just looks out the window for the last ten minutes of the trip. When he arrives Shouyou is there waiting, with Kageyama beside him, looking, actually, significantly less broody than Kenma thinks he’s ever seen him, his large hand wrapped around Shouyou’s.

It makes Kenma feel something hopeful tugging at his chest. Even though he’s not actively brooding, Kageyama is still nothing like his little boyfriend. Shouyou is loud and bright and warm, bubbling over with cheery stories the whole walk to the dorms where the two of them live a floor apart from each other. Kageyama, on the other hand, is reserved and quiet, watching Shouyou with a mixture of mild irritation and deep affection that Kenma recognizes as the way he feels pretty much every time Kuroo is near him.

Kageyama holds the door open for the two smaller boys and Shouyou smiles up at him, and Kenma feels like maybe he and Kuroo wouldn’t be 100% doomed after all.

“So what do you think?” Shouyou asks him later that night, after Kageyama has said goodnight and been kissed suddenly and aggressively by Shouyou before he’s allowed to leave. Kenma is sitting on Shouyou’s bed with him, both of them with their backs against the wall and controllers in their hands, facing the tiny television balanced on an overturned plastic tote next to the desk. “Are you working up to telling him?”

Kenma focuses on the screen for a minute before he answers. “Maybe. I don’t know. I think I’m starting to freak him out. I get all jumpy when he touches me.”

Shouyou looks over at him and then back at the screen. “Does he touch you a lot?”

Kenma thinks about it. All the times Kuroo has an armed draped over his shoulder, or flops down to read with his head on Kenma’s lap. “Yes,” he says.

“And you don’t think...maybe that means something?”

“It doesn’t,” Kenma says. “He’s always been like that. Since we were kids. I think he sees me as a small, warm piece of furniture. Or a cat.”

Shouyou bursts out laughing and drives his car right off a cliff.

“He does not see you as a piece of furniture,” he says, when he’s composed himself.

“You’re never going to catch up to me,” Kenma says. “Would you like to restart?”

“Kenma, come on. A fucking cat?”

“He calls me _kitten,”_ Kenma says,

“Oh my God,” Shouyou says. “And I thought Tobio was hopeless.”

“I’m restarting.”

“Please talk to him, Kenma.”

Kenma ends the race and doesn’t restart it. He leans to the side until his head meets Shouyou’s bony shoulder, and the other boy wraps his arm around him.

“I don’t want you to torture yourself,” Shouyou says after a little while. He smells like warmth and sugar, and something a little musky and less familiar that is probably Kageyama.

Kenma wishes he could just put himself out there, the way Shouyou did, but he’s not the same kind of person. Shouyou throws himself into situations bravely and boldly, and maybe a little stupidly, but he _does_ it. And Kenma...Kenma hides. He always has. But he used to be able to hide in Kuroo’s shadow, and now he feels like the closer he stands to his friend, the brighter the light on him is.

“I hate feelings,” Kenma says.

Shouyou pulls him a little closer and nods his head against Kenma’s. “Yeah. But maybe if you’re not holding them all in…”

“It might be worse.”

“Or it might be amazing.”

*

Kenma doesn’t hear from Kuroo much over the next two days, which has the contradictory effect of making Kenma think about him more, because why is he being so quiet? He enjoys his time playing video games with Shouyou, and going out to eat with him and Kageyama, but he feels it nagging at him. The silence Kuroo is leaving and all the words Kenma should be filling it with.

“Good luck,” Shouyou says when they’re all back at the train station late on Sunday afternoon. He squeezes Kenma around the neck and Kenma hugs him back tightly. “Text me, okay?”

“I will,” Kenma says. “Thank you, Shouyou.”

“Of course,” Shouyou says, leaning back to beam at him. “I really hope it works out. Tobio does, too.”

Kenma and Kageyama meet each other’s eyes, wearing matching expressions of surprised discomfort.

“Oh…” Kenma says.

“Dumbass,” says Kageyama. “You were probably supposed to keep it to yourself.”

“No, it’s fi—” Kenma begins.

“Oh!” Shouyou says, eyes wide. “I’m sorry! I only told Tobio, and he won’t—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Kageyama interrupts. “But I...” He kicks at the ground with the toe of his shoe and directs his gaze somewhere around Kenma’s left shoulder. “I think it’d be good, if you told him. I was...I was really glad Hinata did.”

A flush has worked its way up his neck and he ducks his head down so Kenma couldn’t try to meet his eyes even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t really, because he’s feeling very grateful and nervous and overwhelmed, and he just wants to be by himself with the rumble of the train in his ears.

“I...thanks. I don’t mind that you told Kageyama, Shouyou. And...it helped. Seeing you guys.”

Shouyou smiles with his entire face and then yanks Kenma into another hug with one arm, dragging Kageyama over to join them with the other. (Which doesn’t result in the group hug Shouyou probably hoped for, but Kageyama does wrap an arm around his boyfriend’s neck, while awkwardly patting Kenma’s shoulder a couple times with his other hand.)

Kenma doesn’t have the heart to point out that if their status as a couple had been left up to Kageyama, who is clearly as useless at expressing himself as Kenma is, they may not be standing here with their arms around each other right now.

But still, there they are.

Kenma looks out the window, after he’s found a seat, to see them still standing on the platform, Kageyama behind Shouyou with his chin resting in flyaway, red hair. Together. And Kenma...he really wants that. Needs it, maybe, with Kuroo. He _likes_ being close to him. He likes the way it’s always made him feel so safe and warm, and he even likes the way it sets his heart racing so much lately that it makes him hot and a little breathless. _If_ Kuroo felt the same, he’d get to feel that without trying to hide it. He’d get to find out how far it could carry, what else he could feel, and what he could make _Kuroo_ feel...

Kenma slouches low in his seat, tugging the hood of his sweater up so he feels blocked in and secure. It’s not until the train has pulled out of the station that the heat has faded from his cheeks, though he can still feel it, warm and frightening and _good,_ somewhere low in this stomach. This isn’t the first time he’s thought about Kuroo this way, far from it. But it is the first time he’s thought that maybe, possibly, the things he only lets himself think and feel and do when he’s by himself, could be something he shared with the only person who’s ever made him want any of this. The person that he didn’t mean to fall for but _did,_ and maybe Shouyou is right and it could be amazing.

If Kenma can get himself to say something.

If Kuroo doesn’t say no.

*

Kuroo is already there waiting for him when Kenma’s train arrives, and his stomach has the audacity to actually do a flip when he sees him. It’s the proximity thing again. The longer he’s around Kuroo the easier it is to accept that, yes, he actually looks that good all the time. He’s still a giant dork and it doesn’t matter.

But when Kenma has been away from him and then sees him again, it’s all a little much. His cat-like elegance, all long, lean muscles and a kind of effortless grace that Kenma knows he did _not_ always possess. He looks like a model, leaning against the wall in his skinny jeans and fitted black t-shirt, dark hair falling in his eyes when he looks up through it to see Kenma stepping off the train.

Kenma goes to him, expecting to be wrapped up in his arms, but Kuroo just smiles at him and reaches a hand to take his bag.

“How was it?” he asks, and Kenma almost ignores him and just walks right into him, because he _wanted_ a hug, and why isn’t Kuroo offering one?

Instead he lets Kuroo take his bag and falls into step beside him. He doesn’t have to hurry to match his long-legged stride, because Kuroo has always adjusted his own pace for Kenma.

“It was good,” he says. “Shouyou is an enthusiastic gamer.”

Kuroo snorts. “Of course he is.”

“What did you do?” Kenma asks, watching the pavement in front of his feet and walking close enough to Kuroo that he can feel his shoulder brush the other boy’s arm every so often.

“Not much,” Kuroo says. “The gym, mostly.”

“Oh,” Kenma says. “Was—” He stops. He was about to ask if the godly personal trainer was there, if Kuroo talked to him, if he thought about him when he was alone in their room, but he doesn’t need to know. It doesn’t matter. He knows Kuroo, and he knows it wouldn’t have meant anything if he had. He can’t use that guy as an excuse to not say something to Kuroo that he knows he needs to.

Kuroo looks at him curiously and Kenma shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

“Okay,” Kuroo says, and then he doesn’t say anything else, _anything,_ and Kenma walks quietly beside him all the way home.

As soon as they get inside, Kuroo goes into the bathroom, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he comes out a few minutes later in just his t-shirt and boxers. Teeth brushed and ready for bed.

He says, “I’m think I’m gonna—” just as Kenma says, “Do you want to watch something?” in a voice far louder than he usually uses.

“Oh...um, sure,” Kuroo says, veering away from their bedroom where he was heading, and coming back towards the living room. “If you want to.”

Kenma nods and sits down on the couch, right in the middle where he and Kuroo usually meet in a warm heap when they’re watching a movie, one of them leaning on the other.

Kuroo sits down on the far side of the couch, right next to the arm. Upright and almost rigid. He smiles at Kenma when Kenma looks at him, and then turns to the screen that is still blank, not even turned on yet.

If wanting to touch him frequently was a sign that Kuroo was into him, like Shouyou said, then something seems to have shifted for the worse now. Kuroo has never touched him less. Never, ever looked so uncomfortable being close to him.

“Kuroo?”

“Yeah!” Kuroo says, too loud. They’re both being too loud. “What do you wanna watch? I saved the carnivorous plants thing if you wanna see it again. Or—”

“No...Kuroo.” Kenma lifts his feet onto the couch and hugs his knees to his chest, keeping his eyes on them as he speaks. “Can we...can I talk to you?”

“You don’t need to,” Kuroo says. Kenma looks over at him to see that Kuroo wasn’t facing him either, still isn’t. He’s looking at the floor, hands clenched tight around the remote in his hands. “I get it...I already get it.”

Kenma’s heart sinks. He can _feel_ it, heavy in his chest. Kuroo already knows. He knows how Kenma feels, and the knowledge is causing him to keep his distance from him. What they had has somehow already been broken, without Kenma saying a word.

“Oh...” Kenma says. “Kuroo...I’m sorry.”

Kuroo is shaking his head, still not looking at Kenma. “No, it’s fine, _I’m_ sorry. I...you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s okay if you don’t want me to touch you.”

Something strange seems to happen to the air in the room at Kuroo’s words. Like it’s all been sucked out. Or maybe overfilled. It leaves a buzzing in Kenma’s ears and a dizzy, weightless feeling in his head. He opens his mouth to say something, but Kuroo’s eyes are on his own hands, and he keeps going before Kenma has a chance.

“And I shouldn’t...I shouldn’t be doing it anyway, not when I—”

Kenma doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to hear the next words. If they are, “when I don’t have feelings for you,” Kenma will break and Kuroo will never know the truth. So he just blurts it out now, before Kuroo can finish speaking.

“I like it,” he says, looking right at Kuroo. Strangely unable to move his eyes away, when normally he wouldn’t be able to force himself to make eye contact. Kuroo’s eyes are on his, narrowed in confusion. “I _like_ when you touch me.”

“You…” Kuroo shakes his head slightly. “You mean, you don’t mind it.”

Kenma has to close his eyes for a moment. He pictures Shouyou and Kageyama in his mind. Happy together. Weirdly, perfectly balancing each other.

He opens his eyes again and Kuroo is watching him, lips slightly parted. Waiting.

“I mean I _like_ it,” he says, shifting so he’s facing the other boy with his whole body. “I like it _a lot,_ Kuroo.”

Kuroo blushes then, suddenly and dramatically, and Kenma is surprised to feel the slight pricking of tears at the back of his own eyes at the sight of it. He knows what Kuroo’s blushes mean.

“I need...I need you to be really explicit right now, Kenma,” Kuroo says, his words coming out slowly and carefully. “I need to know what you mean when you—”

 

 

Kenma isn’t sure how to be any more explicit with his words, really isn’t sure he has it in him, so he just rises up on his knees and presses his lips to Kuroo’s.

Kuroo spends about ten long seconds being hesitant—hands still clutching the remote in his lap, eyes wide open (Kenma knows because his are open, too)—and it’s very weird at first, just looking at each other with their lips touching.

But Kuroo is, in fact, _not_ a bad kisser, and once he seems confident that Kenma didn’t simply fall into him and is actually doing this by choice, his hands come up to hold Kenma’s shoulders, and he tilts his head and really kisses him back. Lips moving to fit against Kenma’s properly, to press against them, and then between them, soft and warm. And Kenma doesn’t even think, doesn’t worry about how fiercely his heart is pounding. His just lets Kuroo lick between his lips, and into his mouth, lets him slide his hands to his waist and pull him into his lap.

He wants to taste Kuroo, too, and he feels brave with his eyes closed and Kuroo’s hands warm where Kenma’s shirt has lifted and left bare skin at his hips. He slips his tongue into Kuroo’s mouth and flicks it over the other boy’s tongue, and Kuroo gasps and pulls back. He looks so young suddenly—a little in awe, and a little nervous.

“You really want this?” he asks. His voice is traced with disbelief. Right now he’s the softest, most raw version of himself. The one that always makes Kenma want to come close to him and stroke his face. The one he only knows because Kuroo has always been so honest around him, except—

“Do _you?”_ Kenma asks. “I do, but you...I thought you would have told me if you...if you—”

“If I wanted this?” Kuroo asks, and Kenma nods. “I did. I _do,_ but I didn’t...I didn’t think you had any interest in me. In anyone, even.”

“Just you,” Kenma says, and he watches Kuroo pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and just hold it there between his teeth. “When did you—how long have you...wanted this?”

Kuroo shrugs, looking down to where Kenma has slipped his hand into Kuroo’s between them. “Always, I guess, but I don’t think I realized? It’s just, lately, I’ve been...I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’m single, and what you said about me wanting to love someone. And I realized that that’s the problem, or not the _problem,_ but that’s...that’s why I can’t find someone I want to be with. Why I probably really do give off undateable vibes.”

Kenma shakes his head slightly, not following where Kuroo is going with this yet.

“I can’t connect with anyone because everyone seems undateable to me, too, because they’re not _you._ I compare _everyone_ to you, Kenma, I always have, and no one is ever as good. I never like anyone half as much as I like you, and I think...I realized...I’m probably just doomed to wander around developing half-hearted crushes and never really wanting anyone because, you’re _right._ I do want to love someone, and I already do.” He shrugs again, with a little smile this time, and squeezes Kenma’s hand. “I love you.”

Kenma looks at their hands, Kuroo’s long fingers curled around his. “Is that...why you keep trying to get me to say what I think of you? Why you... ” he closes his eyes as the heat rises in his cheeks. “Why you...almost kissed me? Last week?”

He makes himself look up then, and Kuroo is blushing, too, looking a little chagrined. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “I was just trying to feel you up—out! Oh my God, out!”

Kenma snorts and Kuroo drops his head to Kenma’s shoulder and groans into it.

“I was trying to feel you _out._ You’re so hard to read, Kenma, and I thought _maybe_ you were acting weird because you liked me, too, but then...”

“What?” Kenma asks, running his hand through Kuroo’s hair.

“When I...when I wanted to kiss you, you looked terrified. And then you _left._ I thought all the weirdness must be because you didn’t like me touching you anymore, like maybe you knew I liked it too much. And when you said you were going to see Hinata-kun...”

“I just needed to think,” Kenma says. “I was afraid to talk to you.”

Kuroo lifts his head. He meets Kenma’s eyes and brings a hand to his face, cupping it easily from the bottom of his chin to above his cheekbone. “Why?” he asks.

“I didn’t want to mess up what we had. And I...mostly I didn’t think there was any way you saw me like that.”

“Why did you think I almost kissed you then?” Kuroo asks.

“I thought you were just being you. Flirty and handsy and dumb,” Kenma says, and Kuroo’s lips tilt up a little like he knows Kenma thinks better of him than what he’s saying. “I didn’t know it meant anything.”

Kuroo slips his fingers out from between Kenma’s to hold his face with both hands, and something shifts in his face, just slightly. A darkening of his eyes, a return of that look he had when he’d leaned so close to Kenma the week before, just like he’s doing now.

But this time he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t blink away what Kenma can recognize now as desire, intense and disarming, before his eyes slip closed and he kisses Kenma with no hesitancy at all. Lips bruising and insistent as soon as they meet Kenma’s, pressing them open and claiming his mouth with a hot tongue that winds around his own, and traces wet patterns everywhere it can reach.

Kenma slides both of his hands behind Kuroo’s neck, up into his hair, twisting it, gripping it tight, like he’s thought about doing late at night while Kuroo slept across from him. Kuroo moans softly into Kenma’s mouth when he pulls at it, and when he sucks on the tip of Kenma’s tongue, Kenma makes a tiny sound, too, his hips rocking into Kuroo’s lap.

They both stop suddenly and pull back to stare at each other. Quick, excited breaths falling between them.

“What about that?” Kuroo asks, his eyes wide and open, but his lips curving into that wolfish smile that Kenma has never seen directed at him, and is having a disconcertingly hard time dealing with. It’s as bad as the clean Kuroo smell. “Could you tell I meant that?”

Kenma tugs at Kuroo’s hair and attempts to roll his eyes (just to be sure Kuroo understands that certain, essential things will not be changing despite what is happening now), but he gives up trying to look unaffected, in light of the fact that his body is traitorously screaming a different message. He falls back into Kuroo, takes his lip between his teeth, and does his best to show him how much he means this, too.

Kuroo gasps again, like he did the first time Kenma moved his tongue in his mouth, and Kenma very quickly realizes that every little thing he does to Kuroo earns him a disproportionately large response.

He really likes this.

He tries different things. Little flicks of his tongue along Kuroo’s jaw that make Kuroo pause in gathering Kenma’s hair behind his head, followed by not entirely gentle nips over his earlobe and then down his neck, that have Kuroo’s fingers clenching into fists with Kenma’s hair wrapped tight around them.

He’s always known that he likes Kuroo’s hands in his hair. He smooths his hands over it when Kenma is playing on his phone with his head resting on Kuroo’s chest, tugs his fingers through it gently when it’s just been washed, carefully working the knots out for him as it dries.  

This is new though, this rough grasping, and Kenma likes it just as much. He makes another foreign little sound in his throat as he runs his tongue up Kuroo’s long neck, and Kuroo’s fingers tighten even more, his hips bucking up under Kenma. His erection is already very apparent, easy for Kenma to feel through Kuroo’s boxers, easy to see the outline of it underneath thin cotton.

Kenma starts to reach between them, but Kuroo’s hands are already there, flicking Kenma’s pants open and pulling the zipper down. He doesn’t waste any time pressing his hand into the opening and palming Kenma’s length through his underwear, and Kenma lets out a surprised _oh,_ startled as much by Kuroo’s sudden touch as by his own reaction to it, the way his hips immediately roll forward to press against Kuroo’s hand.

“Kenma?” Kuroo says, still touching him, but not moving. “Is this...you like this?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Kenma says, looking down at Kuroo’s hand on him. Trying to get a handle on all the things it’s doing to him to have it there, even just the sight of it. He feels giddy and overheated, and almost afraid because he doesn’t usually like feeling this much, except that it’s so good. “I’m scared,” he says, before he can stop himself. “But I...really like it.”

“We can go slower,” Kuroo says, running his other hand softly up Kenma’s back. Presumably to soothe him, but a shiver follows his fingers up and then races back down again. “We can do whatever you want.”

“I want this,” Kenma says. “Just...hold me.”

Kuroo is already holding him, but he seems to understand just what Kenma needs, shifting and adjusting them both so his arm is close around Kenma’s back and their foreheads rest together. He wants to be just like this, right up against Kuroo. Held tightly so he won’t feel like he’s going to go spiralling off into the cosmos, exploding like a firework with all of these things Kuroo’s touch is doing to him.

Heated sparks haven’t stopped dancing over his skin since Kuroo stroked his fingers up his spine, and now Kuroo is moving his hand over Kenma’s dick, palming it slowly and firmly.

“Tell me you’re okay,” Kuroo says, and Kenma nods his head just slightly against Kuroo’s.

“I am. I think…” It may be foolish, with the way Kuroo’s hand through his underwear is already making him completely unbalanced, but… “I want more. I want to feel you,” he says.

He can hear Kuroo swallow and he keeps his eyes downturned, watching Kuroo carefully guide his cock through the flap in his boxer-briefs for him. He bites his lip, waiting for Kuroo’s hand to come down over his bare skin, but then he brings it to the bulge in his own underwear and does the same thing, freeing his erection from the fabric, and this is _not_ what Kenma meant, but _oh my God,_ he’s not going to tell Kuroo that. He can’t even form a single word, he just looks down at Kuroo’s cock, long and stiff, the tip shining with precum.

“Yeah?” Kuroo asks, holding Kenma’s hips and pulling him a little higher on his lap so Kenma’s cock bumps right into Kuroo’s, comparatively small and pink next to his thick, red-flushed length.

“Yeah,” Kenma says, and then adds, “Yes. Please,” because the shivering in his skin is spreading to his bones, and even with Kuroo holding him he feels like he may start vibrating so hard that he splits apart and is reduced to molecules floating in the air. He needs Kuroo to touch him _now_ while he’s still in one piece.

“I have, um…” Kuroo reaches out, patting at the crack between the couch cushions next to them. “God I’m sorry this is so gross, but—”

“I know you keep lube in the couch, Kuroo,” Kenma says. As if he could possibly not know what Kuroo’s doing when he stays out in the living room late at night. As if Kenma hasn’t pressed his face into his pillow, ground his own hips into his mattress, listening to Kuroo’s heavy breathing and his muffled groan when he finishes.

Of course, Kuroo doesn’t know that. Kenma imagines he would be obnoxiously happy to hear about it though. Maybe later.

Now he just slips his hand between the cushions while Kuroo blinks at him, and retrieves the little bottle of lube, popping the cap open before handing it over.

“Damn, Kenma,” Kuroo says, still looking slightly mortified, but mostly a mixture of impressed and horny.

His turned-on face is surpassing even his clean smell and his trademark, sexy smirk as the very worst (best—Kenma can be honest now, it’s not actually bad when he doesn’t have to pretend not to notice it) thing about him. His eyes are overly bright, but shadowed by those thick, dark lashes, cheeks flushed and lips parted. Kenma can’t wait anymore, he presses his hips forward and rubs his cock against Kuroo’s, and Kuroo curses and drops the lube.

“Kenma... _Jesus.”_

Kenma _loves_ this, Kuroo’s dramatic responses. There’s so much he could do with this, but right now his body is responding just as intensely. Every bit of it, his over-excited heart, his skin that seems to have become its own entity at this point, something so hot and shivery and alive that it’s more like something new wrapped around him than a familiar part of him. His hands move to grip Kuroo’s shoulders so he can roll his hips again, grinding their lengths together.

“Oh shit,” Kuroo says, his head dropping back against the couch, then lifting back up a breath later to look down at them, pressed against each other. “ _Shit,_ Kenma.”

“Are _you_ okay?” Kenma asks

“Yes, keep going, yes.” The words fall from Kuroo’s lips in a rush, and then his mouth drops open as Kenma does as he asks and rocks into him again, grinding hard. His own breath catches at the feel of Kuroo’s smooth skin dragging against his own, at how there’s no give underneath it, at how _hard_ Kuroo is.

Both of them are dripping, beads of precum slipping between them and spreading as they move together. It’s not enough to get a good glide, but Kuroo is already holding the lube over them, squeezing it and letting the cool liquid drip over their heated skin. He reaches between them and takes them in his hand, stroking down and slicking them up together. Both of them groan, Kenma surprisingly even louder than Kuroo. A low sound ripped right from his chest at the sensation of Kuroo all around him.

His head drops down to meet Kuroo’s and the other boy tightens his arm around Kenma’s back, pulling him as close as he can as he slides his hand up their lengths, and then drags it back down.

“Kuroo,” he whispers, but it sounds strange, that familiar name when they’re doing something so new, trembling together as Kuroo pumps his hand over them. “Tetsurou,” he tries instead.

Kuroo makes a desperate little sound, a whimper, and presses it into Kenma’s lips as he turns his head to kiss him again. More gently this time, licking over Kenma’s lips and into his mouth with slow, wet glides of his tongue that match the measured pace of his hand working over them. He tastes like cinnamon mouthwash. It leaves little burning traces over the roof of Kenma’s mouth, in hot lines over his tongue.

“Kenma,” he murmurs against his jaw, tongue sliding up to follow the line of it right to his ear. “Kenma...this feels so good.”

Kenma hums, almost purrs. It’s hard to control himself with Kuroo sucking on his neck now, pulling Kenma even tighter against him as he maintains the steady pace of his hand around their dicks. He can feel Kuroo throbbing against him, can feel his hips shifting, rising to press up hard into Kenma each time his hand comes down over them, and Kenma starts to move with him, thrusting up into his hand.

His arms are wrapped around Kuroo, holding his head, and he feels Kuroo’s shoulders start to shake. Not little tremors like the ones that have been pulsing through Kenma since this began, but erratic, almost violent shudders. He ducks his head into Kenma’s shoulder and Kenma holds him tight, fingers weaving through his hair. Kuroo’s hand slides up to the tips of their cocks and stays there, palming over them and then slipping into a steady rhythm of wet, shallow strokes over their heads.

“Tet...Tetsu..” Kenma gasps. Kuroo’s shakiness has spread to him. It’s ricocheting around his body, making his words fractured, his breaths halting, his whole body jerk in the tight grasp of Kuroo’s arms. “I’m—ah... _Tetsurou.”_ He’s so close, he’s so, so close. He can feel it right there, about to take him over. That throbbing, nearly painful build of pleasure, clenching tight and hot in his gut, his thighs, his balls.

Kuroo is chanting his name now. A litany of rough whispers, warm against Kenma’s chest. _Kenma, Kenma, Kenma,_ and then silence suddenly, followed by the smallest gasp as his hand goes tight around them and Kenma feels him spill, hot and thick, right over the head of his cock.

He lets out a broken little cry, and then he’s following Kuroo, coming in heavy spurts over them both, and it feels so good. So good to be breaking like this with Kuroo’s hands on him, with his cock pulsing against Kenma’s, his breathing strained and ragged in Kenma’s ears.    

Neither of them move for the longest time. Their cum cools on their skin and they stay right where they are—Kuroo only shifting to wrap both arms around Kenma's back—just holding each other and trailing fingertips over shoulder blades and sweat damp necks, until their breaths are soft and steady between them.

“Hey,” Kuroo says eventually, nuzzling his nose into the hair behind Kenma's ear. “Ken-chan.”

“Hmm,” Kenma says. The tip of Kuroo's nose is tracing the shell of his ear and he closes his eyes.

“Do you think I’m a bad kisser?” he asks.

Kenma sits up very quickly. He just catches a glimpse of a sly grin before he covers it with his hand, shoving Kuroo's head back into the couch.

“I despise you,” he says.

“Oh yeah?” Kuroo is still grinning underneath Kenma's palm, and he nods his head slightly, trying to gesture towards the strong evidence against this claim on their laps.

Kenma blushes and looks away, letting his hand slip from Kuroo’s face.

“Kenma,” Kuroo says, cupping his face and turning it back towards him. “I really want to know. I'm not trying to feel you out, or up, or anything, I just…did you like kissing me?”

His eyes are gold and bright and hopeful.

“I liked kissing you,” Kenma says.

So hopeful. Spilling over with hopefulness, and Kenma wants to shove him away again, just because it’s making him feel like crying with how full his heart is.

“Do you want to do it again?” Kuroo asks. “Do you want...this?”

“Didn't we already talk about this?” Kenma asks, and now Kuroo is the one looking away, a flush burning high on his sharp cheekbones.

“Sort of, but...all you really said is you like when I touch you. And I...”

Kenma almost smiles, but he doesn't want Kuroo to think he's laughing at him, so he rests the side of his face against Kuroo's chest instead, and steps in to help him out.

“And you don't just want to touch me.”

“No,” Kuroo says.

“You want to love me.”

“Yes,” Kuroo says. His voice is steady, but his heart rate has picked up under Kenma's ear. “I _do_ love you.”

“I love you, too,” Kenma says. And maybe he's not looking Kuroo in the eye when he says it, but he means it. And he does say it right over Kuroo's giant, loving, frantically beating heart. “I want all of this.”

“Holy fucking Christ,” Kuroo says, all hushed and reverent like he’s just witnessed a miracle.

“You’re swearing a lot tonight,” Kenma says, sitting up again.

“It’s been a big fucking night, kitten. I can’t help it.”

Kenma nods, Kuroo smiles, and Kenma rolls his eyes and butts his head into Kuroo’s chest because he can’t look at his face anymore. His post-orgasm, mid-love confession face is just as bad as all the rest of it. Kenma doesn’t know what to do with it, with the knowledge that this is his. He can stare at this tall, beautiful boy under him all he wants. He can bite his lips, and sleep under his arm, and it can all make his heart pound and his body burn with very non-platonic feelings, and it’s _okay._

“You alright?” Kuroo asks, drawing his fingers through Kenma’s hair. “Is it too much?”

“Yes,” Kenma says, his voice coming out muffled and soft against Kuroo’s chest.

“Which one?”

“Both,” he says. “It’s weird. And a lot. But I want it.”

“Okay,” Kuroo says, pressing his lips to the top of Kenma’s head. “Okay, good.”

“We’re really gross right now, Kuroo,” Kenma points out.

“Yep.”

“This is nothing new for you,” Kenma adds, and Kuroo laughs, his chest shaking under Kenma’s forehead.

“This is brand fucking new, being gross with you.”

Kenma grumbles and considers getting off of Kuroo’s lap, but Kuroo just grips the undersides of Kenma’s thighs and stands up with Kenma still hanging off his shoulders. He carries him to the bathroom and they clean up together, Kenma sneaking glances at Kuroo, and Kuroo not hiding it at all when he watches Kenma strip off his underwear.

“You’re being pervy,” Kenma says.

“Want me to stop?” Kuroo asks, cocking an eyebrow and making full use of that crooked smile.

Kenma throws a towel at him and then stretches up on his tiptoes and kisses him, because he can.

They eventually make it to their room and stand there in the middle of it, in the little space between their beds.

“Want to...put them together?” Kuroo asks.

Kenma shakes his head. Another night, maybe, but Kenma doesn’t need more space, he just needs Kuroo. He nudges him towards his own bed and then climbs in with him and curls up with his back against Kuroo’s chest and stomach. Warm and firm and shifting with each breath Kuroo lets out over the back of Kenma’s neck.

He’s brought his phone with him, of course, and he opens his text messages, bringing up the most recent ones from Shouyou that he hasn’t read yet.

 **Shouyou  
** _kenmaaaaaa….we’re dying. Anything??_

 **Shouyou  
** _tobio says I shouldn’t ask in case u talked to him and it was bad_

 **Shouyou  
** _Im rallly sorry just let me know u got in safely k?_

 **Shouyou  
** _*realy_

 **Shouyou  
** _***really geez_

 **Shouyou  
** _tobio says i should stop txting u in case u talked to him and it was good and now im bugging u_

 **Shouyou  
** _but im dying. i already said that. im dying alot_

“Small crow is an atrocious typist,” Kuroo says.

“Don’t read over my shoulder.”

“I’m almost completely certain the _him_ in question is me, so I think I have a stake in this,” Kuroo says.

“It’s not you,” Kenma says. “There’s this really hot guy at the gym that I’ve had my eye on.”

Kuroo makes a gasping sound behind him. “ _Cruel,_ Kenma. Cruel for so many reasons. How is there such maliciousness dwelling inside one so lovely?”

“Every time you say things like that, the darkness spreads a little more.”

Kuroo laughs and tucks his head over Kenma’s shoulder. “My angry little cat. Good thing I know how to make you purr.”

“Oh my God,” Kenma says.

Kuroo meows behind him and Kenma wants to die. But mostly in a good way.

 **Kenma  
** _I made it home safely. Kuroo was waiting for me_

 **Kenma  
** _And everything is good_

 **Kenma  
** _You were right, Shouyou_ _(*^‿^*)_

“That’s a very cute and happy face,” Kuroo says. Kenma tries to kick him, but it’s a halfhearted effort.

 **Shouyou  
** _!!!!!!!!!!_

 **Shouyou  
** _!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

 **Shouyou  
** _yeah???!_

 **Kenma  
** _Yeah_ _(＾▽＾)_

“Oh my God, I can’t,” Kuroo says. “Please make that face for me in real life. Please.”

Kenma twists in his arms so he’s facing Kuroo instead, holding his phone down in between them where it will be harder for him to read. But not impossible. He doesn’t mind if Kuroo knows how happy he is.

 **Kenma  
** _Tell Kageyama thank you for me too, please. I’ll talk to you tomorrow (´• ω •`) ♡_

 **Shouyou  
** _(((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o)))_

 **Shouyou  
** _K!!!!! <333 _

“Goodbye, Ken-chan,” Kuroo says. “You’ve slain me. I’ve been sent to my grave by your utter cuteness.”

“Goodnight, Kuroo,” Kenma says, slipping his hands under Kuroo’s shirt where it’s nice and warm, and pressing his face into his chest.

“I make you _happy,”_ Kuroo says.

“You already knew that.”

“I make you happy,” Kuroo says again, quiet and content. He closes Kenma in with both an arm and a leg swung over him.

Kenma is so happy. He makes a sound in his throat without meaning to at the feeling of Kuroo snuggled around him. It’s something like a hum, but also strongly reminiscent of a purr, and Kuroo just about loses his mind with glee.

“You’re the dumbest,” Kenma says.

“Mhm,” Kuroo says, in a way that suggests he would agree with anything Kenma said right now, because Kenma is literally purring in his arms and he’s so happy, too.

“Big, dumb cat,” Kenma says, breathing Kuroo in. Sweat and spice, and something warm and new from what they’ve done together.

“ _Your_ dumb cat,” Kuroo says, his lips in Kenma’s hair.

Kenma nods and tightens his hands in Kuroo’s shirt, pulling him as close as he can get. _His,_ just like he’s always been, and nothing like he’s been before. Everything Kenma already had, and now everything he couldn't stop himself from wanting.

His obnoxious, lanky best friend-turned-boyfriend, breathing soft and warm right next to Kenma’s ear.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr [here!](http://ellessey-writes.tumblr.com/)


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